Monday, 31 March 2008

PREGNANT MAN< TRUTH OR HOAX.

Is the pregnant man Thomas Beatie a hoax for April Fool's Day? PREGNANT MAN: TRUTH OR HOAX? As the world's media descends on small town Bend to find out if the story of the pregnant man is true, the couple at the centre of it all have left town. Thomas Beatie, 34, and wife Nancy Roberts, 45, are believed to be on vacation in his home state of Hawaii. Back home in Bend, Oregon, population 75,000, the locals are bemused. The ruddy-cheeked residents enjoy ice fishing and kayaking. And until Thomas's five month pregnancy was revealed to a stunned world on Thursday, the biggest local story this week was the deputy sheriff shooting a vicious pit bull terrier. Thomas, born Tracy Lagondino, announced to gay magazine The Advocate, that he was expecting a girl, who was due in July. He said: "I will be my daughter's father and Nancy will be her mother. We will be a family." Thomas, who had his breasts removed 10 years ago but kept his ovaries and womb when he became a man, said being pregnant was "incredible". He added: "Despite the fact that my belly is growing with a new life inside me, I am stable and confident being the man that I am." Oprah Winfrey is said to have offered the couple a seven figure sum to clinch the first TV interview. But Fox News has smelled a rat. It reported that Thomas will not now speak to reporters until his confidentiality clause ends on Tuesday - April Fool's Day. A British-born neighbour who is looking after Thomas and Nancy's home said: "They've struck a big deal with someone. "When they come back all will be revealed. This is 1,000 per cent true." The Advocate claims Thomas's doctors confirmed that he is expecting after egg and sperm donation. Nancy had a hysterectomy 20 years ago. Relative Rena Keeley added: "I believe it's true. We've been told not to say anything." But next-door neighbour Ron Schlieper says: "I saw him a few days ago and he didn't look like that. "He was walking down the street with who I thought was his wife Nancy and I don't recall seeing a belly. "If that picture was taken a month ago, he would have been much bigger just a few days ago." In a real-life echo of Arnold Schwarzenegger's film Junior, Thomas says he plans to carry on living as a man while his unborn daughter grows inside him. He became pregnant after stopping testosterone injections. His periods started again and he was implanted with donor eggs. Thomas had been expecting twins before but had an ectopic pregnancy and lost the embryos and one of his fallopian tubes. Now the ethics of the couple's situation has sparked debate across America. Some critics claim Thomas's previous use of testosterone could have damaged his unborn child. Obstetrician Lisa Masterson said: "It really is important that he doesn't take any testosterone early on in the pregnancy. "That can cause male-type characteristics in the female baby." And others are concerned about the child's emotional wellbeing. Psychoanalyst Robert Withers says: "There is going to be an extra degree of complication or confusion about 'where am I from?'" But Thomas and Nancy have already jumped many hurdles to get this far. Thomas has said: "The first doctor we approached was a reproductive endocrinologist. He was shocked by our situation and told me to shave my facial hair. "He then required us to see the clinic's psychologist to see if we were fit to bring a child into this world and consulted with the ethics board of his hospital. A few months and a couple thousand dollars later, he told us that he would no longer treat us, saying he and his staff felt uncomfortable working with 'someone like me'." Transgender groups are championing their cause. Lewis Turner, of Press for Change, said: "As a trans man myself I wouldn't ever dream of getting pregnant. "But I think Thomas Beatie identifies himself as male as much as I do and he just wants to reproduce." Thomas, once lesbian Tracy, became a man because Hawaii does not recognise same sex marriages. The couple, who have been together 10 years, moved to Oregon from Hawaii two years ago and relocated their T-shirt business Define Normal. They were well-known gay rights campaigners in Hawaii. Yesterday the couple were in hiding. But Nancy spoke to the local paper in Oahu saying: "Right now, basically I'm trying to have a vacation and we are not talking to anybody." In 2001 the paper interviewed them when they lived with Nancy's children and went on a gay march. Thomas fought for gay couples to be able to adopt and against homophobic attacks. They carried a coffin containing the names of hate crime victims through the streets. Thomas said at the time: "The 1960s movement put an end to racial discrimination. Today we want it to reach out and cover all minorities." The couple said they had had trouble getting decent housing because they were gay and had to pretend to be strangers to get an apartment. Thomas, then Tracy said: "For fear of being refused, we had to apply as legal strangers. "There are over 1,000 legal benefits that married heterosexual couples have but we don't." They wed in Hawaii after Thomas was legally declared a man because, friends said, he desperately loved Nancy. The couple said family and doctors had been unsupportive about the pregnancy. Last night no one was at the home of Thomas's parents in Oahu. Friend Holly Huber hung up on reporters who called her number. Beaten to bump Thomas Beatie isn't the first man to have a baby - fellow American Matt Rice gave birth to son Blake in October 1999. Rice and his partner, both transgender males, decided to become parents by using sperm donors after side effects caused Rice to stop taking testosterone for a few years.

If you don’t mind, I’m going to think out loud today about a sensitive subject that my instincts tell me is dangerous territory.

However, I’m going to push my reservations aside, press the envelope and breach this topic anyway. The subject is casual sex.

I chose this focus today because of the amount of email I receive about its different aspects. I’m not going to pretend to be an angel here because like a lot of people, the person I am now is different from whom I used to be.

I have evolved and matured during the years, and that progression has changed my mind on various things and strengthened my opinion on others.

I’m sure you have found the same thing as you get older, more experienced and wiser.

Sex is one of those areas where I have strengthened my opinion. In short, casual sex not only threatens your health, but it also robs you of one of the most wonderful human experiences on earth.

Sex is a special way we communicate and express our feelings. For humans, even though it feels good to simply do it, for most, sex is not just about physical pleasure.

In its most meaningful form, sex is about bringing two people together in a powerful and intimate way.

It gives value to your commitment, honors your partner and creates a closeness that is hard to put into words. The bottom line is this: When you give it away mindlessly and casually, sex loses its value, its importance is diminished and you are demeaned as a person.

I may be a bit old-fashioned about this. But after years of dealing with people regarding the topic of casual sex, I’m convinced of one thing for sure… people seldom, if ever, truly feel better about themselves afterward, and it never adds value to your life.

I believe that engaging in casual sex will tarnish your self image in a profound way. In short, you are better off if you treat sex with the respect it deserves and are more mindful about what giving it away costs you.

I know your head is spinning. The world can feel like one of those split-screen TVs with images of a suicide bombing in Baghdad flashing, and the latest awful market news coursing along the bottom, and an ad for some stool-loosening wonder drug squeezed into a corner.

The jumble makes no sense. It just goes on, like the mindless clacking of an ice-dispenser.On the globalized treadmill, you drop your eyes again from the screen (now showing ads for gourmet canine cuisine) to the New Yorker or Asahi Shimbun. And another bomb goes off.

There’s a lot of noise and not much signal. Everywhere there is flux and the reaction to it: the quest, sometimes violent, for national or religious identity. These alternate faces of globalization — fluidity and tribalism — define our frontier-dissolving world.

But in all the movement back and forth, basic things shift. The world exists in what Paul Saffo, a forecaster at Stanford University, calls “punctuated equilibrium.” Every now and again, an ice cap the size of Rhode Island breaks off.

The breaking sound right now is that of the end of the era of the white man.

I’d been thinking about this at Dubai airport in the middle of the night, as the latest news came in from the United States of the bloody end to the mother of all spending binges. I was watching the newly affluent from other parts of the world — Asians and Arabs principally — spend their way through the early-morning hours.

The West’s moment, I thought, is passing. Money and might are increasingly elsewhere. America’s little dose of socialism from Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson might stave off the worst but cannot halt the trend.

Then I arrived in Hong Kong. The talk was all about how U.S. economic woes could impact Chinese growth. Might it tumble to 8 from over 11 percent? And what of India, powering along with growth of a mere 8 percent or so?The West should have such troubles! Even revised downward, these growth rates are at levels Europe and the United States can only dream of.

Decoupling — another Hong Kong buzzword — is not possible in an interlinked world: export-led Asian economies are vulnerable in some measure to U.S. troubles. But that measure dwindles as the Chinese, Indian and Vietnamese domestic markets explode.

Asian statistics can be numbing. With one third of humanity, the numbers get big. There are now 450 million cell phones in China.

But take another — the likelihood that some 300 million people will move from rural to urban India in the next 20 years — and you get a sense of the shifts underway. By 2030, India will probably overtake Japan as the world’s third-largest economy behind the United States and China.

But in the end, transformation is not about numbers. It’s about the mind. Come to Asia and fear drains away. It’s replaced by confidence and a burning desire to succeed. Asian business leaders are rock stars. The culture of education and achievement is fierce. China is bent on beating the U.S.A.

What you feel in Asia, said Claude Smadja, a prominent global strategist, is “a burst of energy, of new dreams, and the end of the era of Western domination and the white man.”

Hong Kong purrs. Its efficiency and high-speed airport train make New York seem third-world. All the talk of Shanghai rising and Hong Kong falling was wrong: they’re both booming. Mainland Chinese .....

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About Me

Ardent family orientated bloke,love my family lots.
Love Australia my Beautiful adopted country, but remember passionately my home village, Chalgrove in Oxfordshire, England. My favourite friends would include several shipmates I am in close contact with who served with me while in the British Royal Navy ..going back a fair bit.
There is also the silence of my age, too full of wisdom for the tongue to utter it - in words intelligible to those who have not lived-the great range of my life.
Vest.GSM, LSGCM, WM, B/PM, ITM, UNM, K-N M, EOW M, Asia- PAC M. ROYAL NAVY 25yrs, Retired.